BLOOMINGTON — After a public outcry about free passes for a tornado relief concert ending up on secondary ticket sites and selling for high prices, U.S. Cellular Coliseum has reached out to those secondary sites to get them removed.

Jenna L. Fecht, marketing and communications manager at U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington, said staff contacted the "go-to sites" for ticket resale and asked them to remove tickets for the Jan. 29 concert by Grammy Award-winning band Chicago.

While neither the Coliseum nor Ticketmaster have any control over these sites, "we explained to them what the concert was about and asked them to take (the tickets) down and they did," Fecht said. "Some of them did take longer than others, but they did get them down."

Glenn Lehrman, global head of communications for StubHub, said when they learned the Chicago concert was a free event, they removed the passes and "if there were any transactions they were voided."

Steve Jewett, who represents TicketLiquidator, emailed this statement: "TicketLiquidator was unaware that the event was a charity event, and at first allowed resellers to list tickets. However, once it learn(ed) that it was a charitable relief event it immediately blocked the event to prevent anyone from listing tickets."

The tickets became available to the public at 11 a.m. Jan. 14 through the Coliseum box office and Ticketmaster and were snapped up in about 45 minutes. Tickets for the show could be found on secondary sites Wednesday afternoon for as much as $261.

"It happens with any show, you always have the secondhand selling of tickets," Fecht said. "We do stop some of it, but there's only so much you can control."

Fecht said the promoter of the show, Live Nation, is working to determine if more passes can be made available for the concert to replace the voided ones.

She also said the Coliseum had previously reserved an undisclosed number of passes for distribution to families, first responders and volunteers involved in the Nov. 17 tornadoes.

For those passes (which were not available when ticketing opened to the public) as well as any released in the coming days, the Coliseum will partner with the American Red Cross to make sure the passes get to the people they were intended for.

Danielle Hatch can be reached at 686-3262 or dhatch@pjstar.com. Follow her on Twitter @danielle_hatch.